Field
Aspects of the present invention generally relate to a technique for displaying medical image data.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a medical image diagnostic apparatus has been developed, and a medical image has been essential for making a pathological diagnosis in a medical field. The number of sites, which can be imaged, and the frequency of the imaging have increased. Thus, the number of medical images to be handled is continuing to increase. Usually, a huge number of medical images have been stored in an image server inside or outside a hospital. A doctor in charge has interpreted a medical image by reading out the medical image using a medical image display apparatus connected to an image server via a network. The medical image is used not only at the time of diagnosis but also as explanatory materials for an explanation of an inspection result to a patient (an informed consent) and a medical conference and at the time of conference presentation. It takes a very long time to find out required information from the huge number of medical images.
To reduce such a burden on the doctor, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-264167 discusses a technique for improving working efficiency by displaying a list of medical images to be capable of visually determined what type of attribute the displayed list has. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-250897 discusses a technique for enabling a diagnosis result and a method of treatment to be simply explained by overlaying and displaying a detailed view of a site of the body, on which a pointer has been overplayed, on an appearance view of the site.
However, in the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-264167, while attribute information of the medical image can be graphically displayed using a site image of each of sites obtained by dividing the body, the site recorded on the medical image cannot be specifically displayed. Only information added to the medical image is displayed. Thus, unless the medical image is opened, the medical image cannot be confirmed. In the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-250897, the medical image is overlaid and displayed on the appearance view of the site of the body. Thus, while the site recorded on the medical image can be intuitively grasped, the technique does not consider searching for the required medical image from among the huge number of medical images.